Happy New Year! My new years was not terribly exciting. In fact we spent it at home, like we always do. And I spent pretty much the whole evening watching hula hooping tutorials on my new tablet.
Which brings me to my goal for this year: To become a great hooper.
Bet you thought I was going to say something like, to lose weight, or to eat better, or to be a better parent. Here's the reason why I didn't mention those as my goals - I already feel like I've got a pretty good handle on that stuff. Of course I'll continue to work on it, but I don't feel lacking in any way in those departments, only that I will continue growing forward.
But hooping, that is something I really want to get good at.
So for Christmas, I got some money. I decided to register for some online hooping classes with Safire from Hoop City. I have been working on my Hoopnotica stuff and have found it really helpful, but Safire's tutorials are really great and the unique part about taking her classes is that you can ask her questions and post videos to get feedback. It's very interactive.
I noticed that she had a boxing day sale and classes were 30% off, so I thought that was the perfect opportunity to sign up. I registered for Seeding 1 & 2, and got a bonus class (Planting) for free.
Now I spend any spare minute I have watching all the videos. There are tons! The Planting class was more just information on hooping. It was rather boring but I wanted to make sure I got it all covered, so I read all the information and watched the videos. Now I am working my way through Seeding 1. I already know how to do pretty much everything covered in this class, but again I like to be thorough so I don't want to skip anything. Besides there may be some stuff that even know I already know how to do it, it could use some fine tuning. Or I might hear of some little tricks I didn't know before. It's also reminded me that I need to work on hooping both ways. I have only been hooping and learning tricks with my dominant side, which is really not good because when the time comes to do reversals or when I get good enough to properly hoop dance, I will be limited because I won't be able to do things both ways. It also keeps my body balanced if I can work both sides. So even though I don't enjoy hooping my less dominant way, I have been forcing myself to do it and to practice the tricks that way as well, even though it's like starting from scratch because it's so much harder in that direction.
I'm really excited, and I've already learned how to do so many more things and am getting so much better. Still a long way off from being able to properly hoop dance, but I am getting there. I often feel like I'm never going to be that good, but when I look at where I started I know I'm already better than I was.
I love the feeling of nailing a trick for the first time after trying for so long and not getting it. It's like all of a sudden something click and my body and mind go, "Ah ha!!!" I can do quite a few tricks now, and it's just a matter of putting it altogether and making it flow.
I just need to practice practice practice!
I think I might start making my own hoops as well. I wanted to buy one but the lady who makes and sells them hasn't gotten back to me (and the ones online are just too expensive!). It looks easy enough to make, I just need to get the right irrigation tubing and some tape. Hoop tape isn't really cheap either, but I figure I could start small and build my collection of tape, and then I'll have lots of make as many hoops as I want. For now I just want to make one simple one that is in between the sizes of the two I already have, and I'd like to make a couple of mini hoops as well so that soon I can start experimenting with mini-hooping off the body, because it looks so cool.
For now I'll just leave with a video of Safire hooping with mini-LED hoops. I thought it was pretty cool, and I love the music too.
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